Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology

9. A Sense of Touch—the Full-Body Experience—in the Past and Present of Çatalhöyük, Turkey

177 9. A Sense of Touch—the Full-Body Experience—in the Past and Present of Çatalhöyük, Turkey Ruth Tringham Abstract: In this paper I come to the more general issues of a sensuous archaeology through the sense of touch—the haptic sense. Using data from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey, I stress that the sense of touch involves far more than just fingers and skin, far more than the obvious haptic sensations, such as surface, form, pressure, pain, temperature, and texture. It involves the full-body sensations of balance and the sense of movement in any part of the body. I anchor my investigation of touch and movement in the past in the archaeological data using existing methodologies such as contact trace analysis and human kinetics . I argue that the concept of taskscapes enables us to think about the temporality , events, and rhythms of the body’s haptic responses, which themselves are essential elements for understanding social practice. I suggest that another anchor to investigating sensory responses in the past is to research the process by which practices that started as new and unfamiliar experiences became familiar and “enactive knowledge.” I end with an exploration of the potential of digital technologies to transform the sharing of archaeological interpretations of past multisensorial experience that include the sense of touch. Sensing Place Through Practice The potential of a sensuous archaeology pursued through the exploration of ideas of embodiment and landscape perspectives and through the embrace of phenomenology (for example, Bender 1993; Bender et al. 2007; Joyce and Lopiparo 2005; Tilley 1994, Tilley 2008) is gaining momentum. Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology, edited by Jo Day. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper No. 40. © 2013 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois Univer­ sity. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-8093-3287-8. 178 R. Tringham My concept of place and its multisensorial experience is very much in line with the practice-based concepts of place as expressed by cultural geographers. Tim Cresswell (2004), for example, summarizes a view of place by incorporating remembered or imagined fragments of practices and events triggered through movement, sound, and visual media, which is very different from the traditional “visualizing” of past places by archaeologists. The connection between place and the senses has been made by a number of other writers (Gibson 1968; Ingold 2000; Merleau-Ponty 2003; Porteous 1990; Rodaway 1994; Tuan 1993). My aim in this chapter is to address the more general issues of a sensuous archaeology and sensing place as embodied social practice through the sense of touch—the haptic or tactile-kinesthetic sense. In our practice as archaeologists, we are highly sensitive to touch; you might say that our discipline is inherently as tactile as it is visual. Moreover, the sense of touch provides a key component for an archaeologist to empirically experience the sensuous nature of past places. And yet explicit reference to the tactile-kinesthetic sense is so subverted as to be wholly unconscious in the discipline of archaeology. Likewise, Paterson draws attention to a similar situation in general when he points out that “within an academic climate that celebrates visual cultures, and the popular media’s infatuation with visuality, touch remains largely neglected, forgotten” (Paterson 2007:1). Touch and the Haptic Experience: Thinking about Taskscapes The tactile-kinesthetic sense is the most fundamental, immediate, intimate , and erotic of all the senses and is important in structuring space and thus in interpreting a person’s relationship to others and to the physical and built environment (Ackerman 1990; Classen 2005; Paterson 2007; Porteous 1990:6). The connection between touch deprivation and violence is well documented by experimental and observational research (Kennebrew 2010; Synnott 2005). Touch is far more than just fingers; it includes the whole skin surface (Montagu 1971). The tactilekinesthetic sense includes not only the more obvious haptic sensations, such as surface, form, pressure, pain, temperature, and texture, but also those full-body sensations of balance and the sense of movement in any part of the body (Gold 1980; Ingold 2000; Merleau-Ponty 2003; Porteous 1990:5). Constance Classen (2005) does not have a chapter on movement and kinetics in her Book of Touch but suggests that it is a theme that runs throughout the book. In this paper, I am forefronting this aspect and giving less attention to pain, pleasure, and the erotic issues. As I was writing my final research report (Tringham 2012) about the senses of place...